by Dave Isbitski, Principal Evangelist, Alexa and Echo

1. An Introduction to Using AWS and ASK to Build Voice
Driven Experiences
DAVE ISBITSKI
PRINCIPAL EVANGELIST,ALEXAANDECHO
@TheDaveDev
isbitski@amazon.com

2. 10:15am-­‐11am
An
Introduction
to
Using
AWS
and
ASK
to
Build
Voice
Driven
Experiences
11am-­‐2:30pm
Open
Hack
2:45pm-­‐3pm
Raffle
Alexa
Skills
so
far
=
?
Dev
Portal
=
http://developer.amazon.com/ask
AWS
portal
=
http://aws.amazon.com
DEVELOPER
DAY
AGENDA

3. 3
http://developer.amazon.com/ask
http://developer.amazon.com/blog

4. What
is
Alexa?

5. Alexa,
Hello.

6. Alexa platform

7. Connected Home (CoHo) and Lighting API

8. Alexa App
http://alexa.amazon.com

9. Alexa
Skills
Kit
(ASK)
Overview

10. ALEXA SKILLS KIT (ASK)
https://developer.amazon.com/ask

11. ALEXA VOICE SERVICE (AVS)
https://developer.amazon.com/avs

12. THE ALEXA FUND
https://developer.amazon.com/alexafund

13. Alexa is the cloud service used by Amazon Echo
The Alexa SkillsKit allows developers to build new Skills (new
voice experiences) for Echo
ALEXA SKILLS KIT

14. Alexa Architecture
Amazon
Alexa
ServiceGUI cards are
rendered in the
Amazon Alexa app
User audio is
streamed to the
service
Audio responses
are rendered on-
device

15. Creating your own
ALEXA SKILLS
Alexa Skillshave two parts:
Configurationdata in Amazon Developer
Portal
Hosted Service responding to user
requests

16. Alexa Skills Kit Architecture
Amazon
Alexa
Service
Developer’s
Application
Service
Amazon’s
Developer
Portal
Application, intents, sample
data Developer Service URL
EndPoint
Configured through portal
User
intents
and
arguments
are
sent
to
the
developer
service
GUI cards are
rendered in the
Amazon Alexa app
User
audio
is
streamed
to
the
service
Audio responses are
rendered on-device
Text response and/or
GUI card data is
returned

17. Sample Interactions of
ALEXA SKILLS
One and done
“Alexa, start Astrology and get the Pisces
horoscope.”
[Horoscope Provided]
Conversation
“Alexa, start Astrology”
[“What’s your sign?”]
“Pisces”
[Horoscope Provided]

18. Demo
Configuring a new Alexa Skill

19. Building an Alexa Skill
HOSTED SERVICE
• Adheres to ASK service interface
• Uses HTTP over SSL/TLS on port 443
• Must be Internet-accessible
• Presents a trusted certificate matching
domain name
– Can use self-signed certificate for
development
– Trusted certificate required for
certification

20. Building an Alexa Skill
HOSTED SERVICE
• You define interactions for your Voice
App through Intent Schemas
• Each intent consists of two fields. The
intent field gives the name of the intent.
The slots field lists the slots associated
with that intent.
• Slots can be any internal types such as
AMAZON.LITERAL, AMAZON.NUMBER,
AMAZON.DATE, etc. or they can be ones you
create.

21. Building an Alexa Skill
HOSTED SERVICE
• The mappings between intents and the
typical utterances that invoke those
intents are provided in a tab-separated
text document of sample utterances.
• Each possible phrase is assigned to one
of the defined intents.
• GetHoroscope what is the horoscope for
{pisces|Sign}
• GetHoroscope what will the horoscope for
{leo|Sign} be {next tuesday|Date}

22. The Amazon Alexa Service
WILL POST EVENTS
LaunchRequest
Maps to onLaunch() and occurs when the
user launches the app without specifying
what they want
IntentRequest
Maps to onIntent() and occurs when when
the user specifies an intent
SessionEndedRequest
Maps to OnSessionEnded() and when the
user ends the session

23. Alexa Service
Examining the JSON Requests from

25. Handling Amazon Alexa Service
REQUESTS
• You will need to handle POST requests to
your service over port 443 and parse the
JSON
• You need to check the session variable to see
if the user started a new session or if request
is from existing one
• Requests always Include a type, requestId and
timestamp
• requestId maps directly to LaunchRequest,
IntentRequest and SessionEndedRequest

26. Increasng Accuracy with
CUSTOM SLOTS
• Created inside Interaction Model
page once in the Developer Portal
• Greaty reduces the number of
spoken utterances required
• Can define as many as you need with
values line seperated
• Can be combined with existing
AMAZON internal types

27. Changing Alexa’s inflection with SSML
• Alexa automatically handles normal punctuation, such as
pausing after a period, or speaking a sentence ending in a
question mark as a question.
• Speech Synthesis Markup Language (SSML) is a markup
language that provides a standard way to mark up text for the
generation of synthetic speech.
• Tags supported include: speak, p, s, break, say-as, phoneme,
and w.

28. Existing Customer with
ACCOUNT LINKING
• Allow your customers to link their
existing accounts with you, to Alexa.
• Customers are prompted to log in to
your site using their normal
credentials with webview url you
provide.
• You authenticate the customer and
generate an access token that
uniquely identifies the customer and
link the accounts.

29. Testing Your Skill
SERVICE SIMULATOR
• Enabled once a Skill has been
configured in the Developer Portal
• Use spoken utterances to generate
ad hoc results
• Use JSON to verify requests
• Combine with AWS Lambda Unit
Tests to verify both client and service
side Alexa end points

31. Demo
My Colors Alexa Skill – JavaScript and Node JS

32. 10:15am-­‐11am
An
Introduction
to
Using
AWS
and
ASK
to
Build
Voice
Driven
Experiences
11am-­‐2:30pm Open
Hack
2:45pm-­‐3pm
Raffle
(5
FireTVs:
2
for
Skills,
3
Random)
Alexa
Skills
so
far
=
?
Dev
Portal
=
http://developer.amazon.com/ask
AWS
portal
=
http://aws.amazon.com
DEVELOPER
DAY
AGENDA